Your folks were actually around in England to see the rise of bands like Cream, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Sabbath, and Zeppelin!?

That is SERIOUSLY fucking awesome!!!!!!

I'd love to interview them and pick their brains about that period of music history. I don't know what they'd have to tell me, but it'd be a bloody awesome conversation, methinks. That's another thing that sort of irritates me about things like Metal Evolution and all of these documentaries that have sprung up over the last several years: you see a lot of interviews from people in bands, music journalists, etc about the impact that a lot of these movements have had upon them; you very seldom hear from the fans and the people who were there when it happened. That's a tale I'd love to hear.

One story that really sticks with me is my mom telling me about the pubs in Manchester she and my dad would go to, where local bands would play. She'd tell me about how the music they played was really raw and gritty. And that became her template for what rock music should be.

EDIT: I just watched the Prog episode online. I liked it more than I thought I would, but I do share many of your criticisms. I doubt the claim that Leviathan was the first prog rock/metal concept album in the 2000s. I did like the first part of the episode with the focus on King Crimson and early UK prog rock. I also liked the middle segment where it jumped from Tool to Meshuggah to Dillinger Escape Plan. The Rush and Queensryche parts could have been cut down a bit and maybe some time given to Opeth or even Fates Warning, but I don't deny them their place in prog metal history.

It wasn't a great episode, but it was more engaging than the boring Grunge episode and the terrible Shock Rock episode. Glam remains my favorite episode and Nu remains my biggest surprise. Now, I want my death metal episode, dammit!

Yeah...Leviathan, first prog-concept album of the 2000s?! Absolute BOLLOCKS. Okay, I'll grant that it technically came out in 1999, but the bulk of Scenes From a Memory's rise to prominence came during the Metropolis 2000 tour, when Dream Theater really started playing the entire album live in its entirety. That, to me, is where the whole bit really started. And while I thought it was very cool that there was a dedicated DT segment, the fact that it was pretty much just Portnoy saying, "This is what me, John Petrucci, and John Myung liked when we were at Berklee" was COMPLETELY unacceptable to me. You can get that from just about any interview with those guys. I know for a fact that Jordan Rudess was interviewed for this project, and by Mike Portnoy's own admission, he was the most well-versed in old school prog bands out of the entire DT camp. Why didn't we get any of that footage? I mean, Jordan's a good interviewee, well-spoken and articulate guy. Played with everyone from David Bowie to the Dixie Dregs to Steven Wilson, Juilliard alumnus, insane player....yeah. He'd have been awesome.

Oh, hell yeah. Derek would have been a GREAT guy to interview, especially given that he draws inspiration from guitarists as well as keyboard players. I remember listening to the commentary track on DT's 5 Years in a Livetime DVD, and hearing Mike Portnoy talk about how Derek cited guys like Zakk Wylde, Eddie Van Halen, and Steve Lukather as influences alongside cats like Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman. And it makes even more sense to have him on when you look at his solo output post DT, as well as the stuff he's done in Planet X. Very insanely proggy stuff there. I don't even know that he'd have been interested in doing the Black Country Communion thing if he had never been part of Dream Theater. I think Between the Buried and Me would have been great to have on as well. For the extreme side of things, they certainly would have made more sense than Dillinger Escape Plan.